Why, Drew Barrymore and Tom Green were somewhat more improbably matched, for example.

Still, it's at least a little odd that the teaming of Bruckheimer (Pearl Harbor, Armageddon) and Scott (Gladiator, Thelma & Louise) would result not in a loud war of wills but, rather, in a war film with a loud Oscar buzz.

"We'd be thrilled," responds Bruckheimer, 56, when asked about the Oscar prospects for Black Hawk Down. A based-in-fact account of the 1993 battle of Mogadishu, Somalia, it tells the story of an elite group of U.S. soldiers who were sent on a peacekeeping mission but ended up in an 18-hour firefight that cost America lives and self-esteem.

That may be putting it mildly. The Detroit-born producer's notorious oeuvre is filled with productions which, while often popular, are seldom critical favorites. In fact, the last time the term "Oscar buzz" and the name "Jerry Bruckheimer" appeared in the same sentence was . . . well let's just say that, except perhaps in the context of technical and musical awards, it's not a regular thing.

As for Scott, the 64-year-old British filmmaker is a far more complicated proposition.

It would be wrong to describe him -- in contrast to Bruckheimer, the vulgar showman of The Rock, Con Air and Gone in 60 Seconds -- as a tender artiste. Scott is perfectly capable of vulgarity too, or, at least, banality, as anyone knows who has seen his Black Rain, G.I. Jane, 1492: The Conquest of Paradise or Legend (arguably, the worst Tom Cruise movie, ever).

Some would insist that the recent blockbuster Hannibal is further proof of the director's crude side. But Scott thinks that film, especially its grisly dinner-party scene, was frequently misunderstood.

"If you'd carried that out on stage as a play, maybe written under the authorship of [French absurdist playwright] Jean Genet or someone like that, it'd have been entirely intellectually acceptable," says the director, who, like the others interviewed, was recently reached by phone in Atlanta.

MODERN MASTER

Basically, Scott is a master craftsman with a great eye. When he takes hold of a script with a strong narrative drive, he can produce such effective offerings (and occasional masterpieces) as Thelma & Louise, Alien and Gladiator, which, you'll recall, picked up the best-picture Oscar last March.

"Gladiator went [into theaters] really early in the year and then was remembered the following year," Scott says. "This one is coming right out of the box just prior to, on the threshold of, the academy nominations. So we'll have to cross our fingers and hope we get lucky."

Because of their track records, both Bruckheimer and Scott carry tremendous clout in Hollywood these days. If they didn't use that clout to pummel each other while making Black Hawk Down, part of the reason may be, as they both profess, the movie's highly sensitive subject.

"The subject would dictate the way it must be done," Scott flatly asserts, and Bruckheimer agrees.

"You know, we lost 19 men in this operation and you've got to be faithful to their families," the producer says. "Brothers and sisters and grandparents are all still alive, and wives. So this [movie] is a very serious undertaking."

The new film, which stars Josh Hartnett (Pearl Harbor) and Ewan McGregor (Moulin Rouge), is based on journalist Mark Bowden's 1999 best seller of the same name.

"I think it's fair to say that anybody who saw those [news] pictures of dead American soldiers being dragged through the streets by jeering mobs had to be a little curious about what . . . was going on," says Bowden, explaining how he first became interested in the story.

The resulting film, according to the author, is basically true to actual events, although it makes some "adjustments in the storytelling," including the use of composite characters and fabricated scenes.

"I think people really understand the difference between a work of journalism, a documentary film and a Hollywood feature film based on an actual event," says Bowden, a former Philadelphia Inquirer staffer who now writes a column for the paper on the war against terrorism. "Most people are fully aware of what they're getting."

The movie also leaves out a lot of his book's complexity.

"You have to ruthlessly focus a movie," says Bowden. "It's two hours, this one is two hours and 20 minutes long. The book . . . tells the story of an 18-hour-long firefight with hundreds of characters. So in the film, you clearly have to make really tough decisions fairly early on about what you're going to show."

INTEREST AND 'ALGIERS'

Bruckheimer's initial interest in making the film, which opened Friday in most places, including Central Florida, sprang from a fascination with "process," or how organizations and operations work.

"Give me an inside look at something -- something that I'll never be a part of -- and show me how it actually works," he says. "Since I've never been in combat, this gives me the experience of combat."

As for Scott, when he first encountered the material, the movie he saw in his head was one that film historians consider to be a classic -- if not the classic -- of modern warfare.

"When I read the book initially, I couldn't get The Battle of Algiers out of my head," reflects the director, referring to Italian-communist director Gillo Pontecorvo's incalculably influential film that presents, with striking immediacy, the Algerian rebellion against the French in the 1950s. "It's about urban warfare."

There's something, Scott says, "really tough and harsh" about what he terms "the bad game, really tough game" of the sort of fighting Pontecorvo depicts, with "unrelenting" forces on either side. No other war film, not even Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, was any sort of model for him.

"That's what the parallel always was to me," he recalls. "I said that to Jerry. I said, 'You've got Battle of Algiers, here.' "

For both producer and director, Black Hawk Down was a clear departure. Bruckheimer, of course, had dealt with combat themes before, notably in this past summer's Pearl Harbor.

"Yes, but nothing like this," he explains. "It's a recent event. Pearl Harbor was an event that happened 60 years ago . . . and we put a Hollywood love story on top of the movie. So, it's a much different film."

ENTERING A NEW ERA

Scott sees the new film as part of a deliberately engineered new phase in his career that began with Gladiator.

"I was sitting one day, about 21/2 years ago, thinking: You know what? I've only done 11 movies in 21 years," he recalls. "So I decided just simply . . . to get on with things and make decisions in a faster and more forthright basis."

Bruckheimer came to the project before Scott did. His company bought Bowden's book, reportedly when it was still in galleys, and commissioned a screenplay from the author. Other screenwriters were brought in, including newcomer Ken Nolan, who ended up with sole screen credit.

"Then I got heavily involved in the casting," says Bruckheimer. "I brought Josh Hartnett to him [Scott]. He wasn't really aware of his [Hartnett's] work because he hadn't seen Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor wasn't out yet.

"Then we cast the rest of the parts. I brought over a bunch of the actors who were on Pearl Harbor because they were terrific in it." They included Tom Sizemore and Ewen Bremner.

"The toughest thing," adds Scott, "is getting the driver, the director, into the driving seat. The right person. Once that starts to happen, things start to get more aligned."

DIVIDED RESPONSE

As ads for the movie trumpet, Black Hawk Down has made the top-10 lists of several critics, including Peter Travers of Rolling Stone and both Richard Schickel and Richard Corliss of Time magazine. But it hasn't been a big award-winner with critics groups.

Writing in The New York Times, David Thomson lumped Black Hawk Down in with Pearl Harbor, calling both films victims of "blithe fantasizing." In the Village Voice, J. Hoberman found the new film "incoherent" and complained that "very little emotional capital is invested in the characters."

Andrew O'Hehir of Salon .com was especially harsh. Black Hawk Down, he wrote, is "every bit as pointless and misguided . . . as the botched military mission it depicts."

Scott brushes off such criticisms.

"I never wanted to do much external -- extraneous, really -- character development," he says. As for the historical and political context of the events shown in the film, he feels that "it's all there" if you know where and how to look for it.

The sharply divided critical response brings to mind the reaction to Scott's Blade Runner, which thrilled sci-fi addicts and video-gamesters while leaving many other viewers cold. Perhaps the natural constituencies for Black Hawk Down will turn out to be news junkies (who can supply much of the context themselves) and Bruckheimer's usual sensation-craving audience.

The film is certainly off to a good start, having taken in $35.3 million from Friday through Monday of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend -- the first weekend of its wide release.

A MOVIE FOR THE TIMES

If Bruckheimer and Scott approached Black Hawk Down from different angles, they can both agree that it has taken on a special relevance in the post-Sept. 11 environment.

The movie was planned and shot before the tragic events of that day. And yet the connections and parallels between the war in Afghanistan and the battle shown in this film can only serve to spark public interest in Black Hawk Down. In fact, the release of the movie was moved up from March so that it could qualify for Oscar consideration.

"Clearly it's an anti-war movie, but it's pro-military," says Scott. "It's a strange combination because it is in support of, and kind of illuminating, what these guys do for us. In that view, then, it's very relevant today. . . . It also raises the question, as Sept. 11 did, about paying attention to the rest of the world."

At one point, according to Columbia Pictures, a postscript appeared at the end of the movie linking America's noninterventionist foreign policies following the Somalia tragedy to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But this statement was removed so that the events in Somalia could stand alone.

To Bruckheimer, Black Hawk Down gives viewers a chance to go behind the scenes of an operation that is not unlike the fighting in Afghanistan. In fact, he says, the group in the film, including some of the same American soldiers, was among the first into Afghanistan.

"You can't see [on TV] what our military is doing over there" in Afghanistan, notes Bruckheimer. "You see a puff of smoke from a bomb and a journalist standing in front of a camera.

"But this [film] shows you how they operate in very hostile urban environments and it gives you a sense of what they're capable of doing under serious duress. And it also shows you their commitment and their bravery and their courage.

"So I think it's a very important film for people to see -- to see that they have young men who are willing to sacrifice their lives for their country, and for the man next to them.